Bespelling Jane Austen

by Mary Balogh

  She ran to us, talking all the while “…such a surprise—I have no idea—but Jane, do come here and tell—I was outside picking up the newspaper when—and this weekend she—”

  “Someone gave me a car,” Jane said.

  She gestured at a bright, yellow, shiny VW Bug parked outside their house.

  “That’s so cute!” I said. “Lucky you! Who’s it from?”

  “We don’t know!” Missy cried. “Such a surprise—they delivered it this morning and Jane and I were getting ready to—you know she’s been looking at cars, and I said—and the insurance is paid for a year—” She tugged at my sleeve and whispered, “Emma, I think it’s from her ex-boyfriend—you know, the one who—but she’s probably told you already, and my feeling is she—oh, look at Knightley, he’s so cute….”

  I didn’t often agree with Missy, but the sight of Knightley, sleeves rolled up and peering inside the hood at the Bug’s engine, in serious conversation with Jane, was rather nice. His butt, a little too skinny when I knew him, had improved immensely.

  “Congratulations, Jane,” Knightley said, rolling his sleeves down and buttoning his cuffs. “Welcome to driving in D.C.”

  “Oh, you’re so funny! You must have some iced tea—coffee—no, stay to lunch. Jane, do we have some—or maybe we should celebrate by—Emma, you must be—”

  “We’re fine, Missy,” I said, knowing that once trapped in her cat-filled house we would be there for hours. “Knightley and I have something to do. I mean, I have and so does he,” I added, noticing her look of delighted interest. “Congratulations, Jane. It’s a lovely car.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured. She stroked the car’s shiny surface and looked at Knightley with a shy smile. “You didn’t need to come over, but it was great to see you. It’s just that Missy was so excited and we wanted to share the news.”

  “No problem,” Knightley said, grinning back like a fool. “We’ll see you later.” Out of earshot, he muttered, “That’s absurd. She’ll spend hours trying to find a parking spot near the house and the shocks won’t last a month on those cobbles.”

  “It’s a great car,” I said.

  “Maybe, but whoever gave it to her wasn’t thinking straight.” He clicked the remote to unlock the car doors. “Do you want to grab some lunch?”

  “What?” I stared at him. “You’re asking me to have lunch with you?”

  “Whatever,” he muttered and opened the car door for me.

  “I mean, it’s only ten-thirty.”

  He shrugged and pulled away from the curb with a screech of tires. “Take a look at that contract and give it back to me,” was all he said on the ride home. “Call the office next week if you have any questions.”

  Back in the apartment I called Isabella and we squealed together on the phone, talking about her due date and if she’d be back in the States by then, and how soon she’d know whether it was a boy or a girl. I assured her that the business was going fine, just fine, and that yes, I’d met Frank, and he seemed like a really nice guy, Knightley was fine and the gargoyles were quiet.

  I had to go through the same sort of subterfuge when Mom and Dad called a bit later that day. By then, I sat at the dining-room table scattered with reports and statements and saw that, indeed, in the last few weeks, something had gone very wrong with the business’s finances. Money had disappeared, apparently into thin air. I’d have to tap into the savings, and lose considerable interest, to make the expenses for the rest of the month.

  The worst thing was that I couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Normally I took my problems to Isabella, but she was so happy now I couldn’t tell her I’d possibly screwed up her business. I hadn’t been in town long enough or had enough leisure time to make friends, real friends in whom I could confide. The only person I knew well here was Knightley and there was no way I would share this misery with him. He was far too fond of taking over. Just a few hours ago he’d taken the phone from me and calmed Missy down—something I might have been able to do without his interference, given time and patience. And someone like Missy, creating crises and fluttering around helplessly offering iced tea and adoring giggles, only made him worse.

  Knightley hadn’t really changed much in the past ten years. He was still the superior, arrogant privileged male, and, worse, he could still jerk my chain.

  CHAPTER 5

  “YOU LOOK TIRED, EMMA.” FRANK CHURCHILL, his face full of concern, put his hand over mine as he slid into the leather booth opposite me. When he’d called and asked to meet, I’d suggested this bar on Capitol Hill where dark oak paneling, leather and the dark-suited clientele precluded any sort of romantic atmosphere.

  I was protected by so much magic I could as well have been wearing armour. His touch had absolutely no effect on me; today, he looked like a fairly good-looking guy and that was all. I had only agreed to meet him because after my weekend with the books, followed by a meeting on Monday with my accountant and another this morning with the bank, I needed lunch and a break. I didn’t want a big helping of vampire charm; I wanted a burger and fries.

  “I am tired,” I said after we’d ordered. “Things are pretty busy. How was your trip?”

  “Oh, good, good.” He nodded. His face was unreadable behind his wraparound mirror sunglasses. “That’s actually why I wanted to meet.”

  The waitress placed our burgers on the table, mine cooked medium-well and Frank’s rare. I started in on the side of onion rings I’d ordered.

  “There’s something I have to say to you, Frank. I don’t remember giving you permission to bite me, although I suppose I must have done, but I’m wondering what else I don’t remember about that night. If there’s anything else you think I should know, please tell me now.”

  He ran his finger around the neck of his beer bottle. Without any protection I think I might have swooned. As it was, I saw it only as a cheap vampire trick.

  “I’m sorry. You were so sexy, Emma. You smelled so delicious. I asked when—when I thought you wouldn’t say no to anything.”

  “I trust you’re not implying it was my fault—that I was so sexy and delicious I made you do it? And you waited three nanoseconds before I had an orgasm to ask me? I was really upset when I found the bite marks.”

  “Give me a break, Emma.”

  “No, Frank. You give me a break. Give me some honesty here, or I’ll order a stake, and it won’t be one with fries.”

  “Christ,” he said. “You’re so hostile.”

  “Do you blame me?” I eyed the furniture in the bar, wondering if I’d worked out enough recently to rip off a chair leg and plunge it into Frank’s immaculate shirt front. “So was there anything else unusual that you or I did that night? You didn’t invite any of your buddies in, for instance, and put a spell on me so I’d blank that out, too?”

  “Of course not! I can understand that you’re mad,” he said, and I wished I could believe what he was about to say. I didn’t really think I’d been the victim of some vampire orgy, but I wondered what I might have said to him. “You were gorgeous, we had a great time and I…well, I am what I am, Emma. A shallow bite, a little blood, is very erotic during sex for a vampire. I think you must know that. I gave in to temptation, and I’m sorry. You’re pretty magicked up at the moment, aren’t you?”

  I nodded, my mouth full of burger.

  He sighed. “I’m sorry I’ve lost your trust.”

  I waved the waitress over. “Can you bring us some ketchup, please? No big deal, Frank, it’s not as though we have any sort of future together.”

  He dipped a fry into the bloody juice on his plate. Eeew.

  The waitress returned with the ketchup and Frank looked appalled as I slopped a generous amount onto my fries. “Remind you of anything?”

  “Emma, what can I do to convince you that I am sorry for upsetting you?”

  I considered what he could do. I couldn’t bitch at him indefinitely; it seemed childish. He knew now I was mad at him, and I hoped he had some idea
why, and that he wouldn’t do the same thing to another nonvamp. I’d prefer to end our relationship, such as it was, on a friendly note. “Are you going to eat that pickle?”

  He smiled and turned his plate, pickle side toward me. “Help yourself.”

  “But why did you want to see me, Frank?”

  “Well…” he picked at the label on his beer bottle. “When I went back to the L.A. office this weekend, they offered me a partnership.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. But the problem is…” another pause.

  He leaned forward and gazed into my eyes. “You know why this makes things complicated for me. I don’t have to explain it to you. You’re so intuitive and smart and I’m sure you’ve already…well, I don’t need to say any more.”

  In my opinion he’d have to say a lot more to explain whatever it was he was trying to say, but he nodded emphatically as though he’d given me a perfectly adequate explanation. Enjoying my sudden and unexpected reputation as a person of high intuition and intelligence, I could only murmur that of course I understood, before diving into my fries again.

  We parted with a friendly kiss on the cheek—there was no dangerous vamp sizzle at all, to my relief—and I returned to the office to find Harriet in tears.

  “Clients have been calling me up and complaining,” she wailed.

  “About what?”

  “They said we sold their e-mail addresses.”

  “What?” This was serious. We never, ever sold or traded an e-mail address. “What sort of material have they been getting?”

  She sniffed and showed me an e-mail that had been forwarded to her.

  Attention, Washington DC paranormal singles!

  A new sophisticated urban solution for finding that special someone!

  Save the date now for our debut event, Friday, June 17, 6:30 at the Vineyard Restaurant.

  www.elfinlove.com.

  “What lame copy,” I commented. “And that’s at our location—our old location. What’s going on?”

  Harriet clicked on the link to a site full of gorgeous swirly patterns and tinkling music. “Oh,” she sighed. Her eyelids fluttered and her head dropped forward.

  I caught her before she fell out of her chair, and clicked her browser off.

  Harriet blinked and shook her head. “Sorry, what did you just say?”

  “Please don’t visit that site again. It seems to have some sort of magic virus. Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine. I was having a great dream about me and Bob. We were dancing in a beautiful cave hung with satin and velvet drapes, and elves were giving us goblets of wine and delicious cakes.”

  “How clichéd,” I commented. “You’d think elves could have come up with something different in the past thousand years or so. But that’s not what worries me.”

  Harriet gasped. “Oh, no, Emma, do you think my computer is infected?”

  I assured her it wasn’t her fault, while hoping we wouldn’t lose too much data. Once I’d started the enchantment virus application, I told Harriet to take the rest of the day off, since it would take several hours of computer time.

  After she’d left I began to shake. What if we’d both looked at that site and I hadn’t been protected? Would we be lost in some sort of romantic elven dream, sprawled helpless on the floor?

  I was pretty sure Elton, with his IT background, had something to do with this nasty trick, but I’d already had one uncomfortable confrontation that day and didn’t have the energy for more. By Friday, though, I’d be ready to get myself magicked up and attend the debut event of elfinlove.com, just to see what was really going on.

  The enchantment virus application popped up its report on the screen and I breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was intact. So something had gone right—actually two things had gone right this week: I’d messengered over the signed contract and a deposit to Knightley for the rooftop rental, and Harriet and I had worked our way down the list of extra services we needed for the location—catering, plants, awning, valet parking and so on.

  On an impulse I picked up the phone and called Knightley.

  “I didn’t thank you for the roof rental.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “No, really, it’s going to be great. And you gave me a very reasonable rate.”

  “You’ll have more overhead there. You won’t save a whole lot. In fact, it may cost you more.”

  “Maybe.” I examined the chipped polish on my toenails. Another thing to do. My legs were looking a bit prickly, too. And then something made me ask, “What are you doing on Friday evening?”

  “This Friday? What do you have in mind?”

  I told him about the spam, but glossed over the possible misuse of my client list, and that now Hartfield Dating Agency had competition.

  I heard clicking sounds. “Yeah, I got it, too. It’s in my spam folder. They probably hit every known paranormal single in town.”

  “Don’t click through! You’ll wake up in seven years and a day with your keyboard attached to your forehead and a fried hard drive.”

  He laughed. “I’m tougher than that. Sure, I’ll go with you on Friday. Sounds like fun.”

  “A singles’ bar full of elves? I don’t think so. This is business, Knightley.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot. I’ll meet you in the bar.”

  I said goodbye to him and disconnected. A date with Knightley—what was I thinking? But it wasn’t a date. It was business, as I’d told him. Harriet would probably have accompanied me, but she was out of her depth with elves—I’d learned that the hard way. I could have gone on my own, but I was finding out that although I might pride myself on my self-sufficiency, sometimes it was nice to have a friend.

  Or, if not a friend, someone who knew me.

  KNIGHTLEY, BEING A GENTLEMAN, had arrived at the bar early so I wouldn’t have to wait alone at the mercy of prowling elves. Sure enough, a group of them were having an impassioned conversation about something highly technical—I know it involved Java, and I didn’t think they meant coffee, but I couldn’t understand much more than that. I could have walked in stark naked and they wouldn’t have noticed.

  I’d put quite a bit of thought into what I should wear. Not the short-skirted polka-dot dress that I’d worn (for the first part of the evening) when I’d taken Frank home. A suit looked too formal. Definitely not jeans or shorts. Remembering Jane Fairfax’s elegance, I finally settled for a plain black linen dress, chunky bracelets that looked like ivory and small gold earrings.

  Knightley sat at the bar, one ankle propped casually on his knee, reading the newspaper. A glass of beer stood at his elbow. Now and again an elf or vamp, usually a female, glanced at him, but he paid them no attention. He looked good in a pair of khakis, a blue-and-white striped shirt, his bare feet in loafers. I felt myself give a little sigh.

  He looked up as I approached. “Why, Miss Moneypenny!”

  “Very funny. Is that beer shaken or stirred?”

  “What are you drinking, Woodhouse?” He pulled out a barstool for me with his foot.

  I ordered a zinfandel.

  “Did you see this in the paper?” He pointed to an article in the Metro section of the Post. “A lot of people fell asleep at their computers on Tuesday afternoon. Some odd phenomenon, apparently.”

  “The junk mail.”

  “Yeah. Not good. And now it looks like you have serious competition.” He folded the newspaper and laid it on the bar. “Are you magicked up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall we go in?” He stood and offered me his hand.

  I hadn’t touched his hand in that way for years. I’d forgotten how my hand, not particularly small or delicate, felt that way when his long fingers were wrapped around mine.

  “I’ll get this,” I said as we approached the check-in table. “Business expense. Oh, hi, Augusta. Fancy seeing you here.”

  Augusta, wearing a tight strapless violet leather dress, sat at the check-in ta
ble. “Thirty dollars, please. Oh, Knightley,” she cooed. “We don’t have nearly enough males here. Don’t you look good enough to eat!”

  “And I don’t?” I said. “Oh, hi, Elton. How are you?”

  “What are you doing here?” Elton gripped my elbow and steered me to one side.

  “Research,” I said. Being manhandled by a beautiful, blond, pointy-eared thing with such gorgeous, fathomless dark eyes wasn’t so bad, even if it did make me think in clichés.

  Someone else grabbed me. “Go magic up some more,” Knightley hissed in my ear. “You’re not even in the door and you’re falling apart.”

  “Oh, bite me,” I muttered, and saw a male vamp look at me with interest. I shot into the bathroom and locked myself into a stall—I’d never been much good at administering self-enchantment in public.

  When I emerged, to my surprise I saw Jane Fairfax applying lip gloss at the mirror.

  Our reflected eyes met.

  “Is Missy here?” In a way I hoped she was, because then she’d become Elton and Augusta’s problem, not mine.

  “No.” She didn’t sound very friendly.

  The door opened and Augusta sashayed in. “Oh, there you are, Jane. Don’t hide in here, honey. There are lots of lovely males out there.” She admired her own size-two reflection, and whined for our benefit, “God, I look huge today.”

  Neither Jane nor I supplied the obligatory cries of how thin she looked, and, on the contrary, we were the fat ones.

  “I wish I had your hair,” she said to Jane.

  “Your hair is great,” Jane said dutifully.

  I was tempted to tell Augusta that I wished I had large, pointy ears like hers.

  “You haven’t called the senator yet,” Augusta said.

  I busied myself with mascara to disguise the fact that I was blatantly eavesdropping.

  “I’m not sure whether that’s the sort of job I want. My background is—”